[Sigia-l] Form Usability - Search & Cancel location

[Joe 10 Enterprises]

Though this is my gut reaction too, and has been born out through 
observation, long talks and some research with both westerners and 
occidentals, I think you need to look no further than just choosing 
"Save As..." from your File menu and noting the order and placement 
of the default button.

Now, if your programmer is using visual Emacs or something, they may 
well be used to seeing most often used features to the left and 
higher in the "logical" tab order... but implementing a good TabOrder 
and AccessKey rule can help that.

HTH,

/Joe

At 8:05 AM -0700 6/25/02, Steph wrote:
>I'm having a bit of a debate with one of our
>programmers and was hoping for some help from the
>Sigia community. We are developing an online
>multi-step form and a question has come up about the
>placement of certain "action" buttons - namely the
>Submit and Cancel buttons. (note: Cancel is a required
>option for this application because of the multiple
>step nature of the form.) We've managed to agree on
>the fact that these two options should NOT be located
>right next to each other as this increases the
>potential for users to mistakenly click the wrong
>button. The debate that's come up is in regards to
>which side (right or left) each of these options
>should be located. I've argued that the Submit button
>should be placed on the right hand side and the Cancel
>button on the far left. In my experience, users tend
>to read from left to right and this is the most
>natural placement of such an option.
>
>I was wondering if anyone out there has had any
>experience with this issue or any thoughts on which
>option is more "usable".
>
>
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-- 
Joe Tennis
Information Design Honcho
Joe 10 Enterprises
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